Twenty or twenty-four years ago we had nothing but the vaguest knowledge of Kafiristan, but the country had been gradually opened out by General Walker and Colonel Montgomery's pundits in disguise.

At a time when the pundits of the Oxford Dictionary are coldly aloof, like GALLIO, and the Army Council, though often approached, studiously reserve their decision, it rests with you Mr. Punch, as Arbiter of National Opinion, to give judgment.

He could endure hard work; he was a good civil engineer and comprehended the theory upon which his superiors were working, and above all, he was an enthusiast in the thing they were undertaking, and had independent devices of his own, to be submitted at the proper time, for the attainment of certain mechanical ends which had puzzled the pundits at Washington.

The vassals of your fathers were but few Compared with yours, who move the whole world wide; You still can splash an oriental hue, Red, yellow, green or blue, Upon a fresh and various outside; While you supportperhaps your greatest pride High pundits for your intellectual feast, And some tame bards, of whom I am the least.

It is a tradition that one of the wise men who followed the Star of Bethlehem to the Child that was cradled in a manger was a learned pundit from Benares, and it is certainly true that the doctors of theology who have lived and taught in the temples and monasteries there have exercised a greater influence upon a larger number of men than those of any other city that ever existed.